HS Environment The S Group intends to calculate the natural handicaps of its entire operations with a model developed by the University of Jyväskylä: “A measure similar to a carbon footprint”

Jyväskylän the university is beginning to develop a calculation model that will make it easier for companies to assess their environmental impact.

Calculating the climate impact is already commonplace for large companies, and in many areas it is mandatory for EU emissions trading.

Instead, only the first steps are taken in calculating other environmental impacts, even as society’s demands increase.

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The University of Jyväskylä’s four-year project, in which Sitra and the S Group are partners, aims to address this problem.

“The core idea is to create a carbon footprint-like meter for natural handicaps, or at least take big steps towards it,” says the dissertation researcher. Sami El Geneidy.

Model building has already been tried by calculating the University of Jyväskylä’s own environmental impacts. Now, for the first time, the model is being developed to meet the needs of a large and large-scale company. The S group agreed to be a guinea pig. It also finances the development of the method together with Sitra, the Finnish Independence Fund.

“Although the effects of natural handicaps on the availability of raw materials, for example, have already been identified, we do not yet have tools such as climate indicators to measure natural handicaps. However, indicators are urgently needed so that we can understand the disadvantages of our entire value chain and set targets to reduce them, ”SOK’s Vice President, Corporate Responsibility Nina Elomaa says in a company release.

Examining the entire value chain means that the model also takes into account the environmental damage caused by the production of products sold by the S Group and not only the consequences of the S Group’s own actions.

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Investigator El Geneidy admits the task is difficult. Different climate emissions can still be easily converted into one unit, ie carbon dioxide equivalents.

It is much more complicated to turn into comparable “disadvantages”, for example, the depletion of Finnish forest nature, the desertification in Africa or, for example, the overfishing of fish stocks in the Chinese Sea. However, companies would need a clear and comparable measure of their natural footprint in their management.

Is it even possible?

El Geneidy thinks it’s at least not completely impossible. “Methods have been developed for this.”

One of them is PDF, that is potentially disappeared fraction of species. It means the proportion of species that may be lost. Attempts are therefore made to compare the various natural handicaps on the basis of how much species they cause. For example, the aim is to reduce the number of natural handicaps caused by land use or emissions by using an estimated species loss.

It doesn’t sound easy either. Much of the Earth’s species are still uncharted.

However, according to El Geneidy, it is important to try. “We need something to even get in the right direction and be able to communicate things better.”

The University of Jyväskylä team will not find out in the terrain the conditions under which the products sold by the S Group originate. The model should make use of previous research on the average environmental impact of different product categories.

However, El Geneidy believes that there is certainly a need to try to make more precise distinctions in food products, for example, because they are so important to the S Group.

The project utilizes financial accounting procedures that make the calculation itself cost-effective.

The model is to be built so that it could later be used not only in Finland but also internationally.